


thou seemst a knight fair good

by omphale23



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Yet they will be happy. Whatever else, whatever is said of them by those who stand outside and pass judgment, they will be happy.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	thou seemst a knight fair good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lorenleah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorenleah/gifts).



> There is no onscreen death in the story. But it's Arthuriana. There is a lot of dying in the source material. Some of it is referenced here.

He will go down in literature as a cipher, an empty space between Guinevere and Lancelot. His will be the moment untold, the desire whispered and denied, the fourth side of an epic love triangle. He will become a name, and then less than a name, his story so small that it is confused with others, his successes lost beneath centuries and quests and fantastical beasts too real to be true.

But first, before all that, he is a man. And a king. A conqueror. A friend.

***

It was not, no matter what the scribes recorded, love at first sight. Galehaut had never before seen such form, such passion and precision and sheer talent for destruction. But he did not love the Red Knight, nor wish him stripped of armor and laid bare before the court of the thirty kings.

Galehaut did not love the anonymous knight, but to watch his own men fall before a stranger was a new experience. He did not love, but he was curious. He wondered at the power before him, and he wondered whether he could turn that power to himself.

To make a king wonder is a dangerous thing.

***

The Red Knight was a puzzle, an ache like a lost tooth, a memory not yet formed. Galehaut sent far and wide. 

He was not accustomed to failure.

***

It was, perhaps, love at second sight. 

One defeat was an enigma, two was Fate spinning his future out in the whirl of battle and the blood of his followers. Galehaut watched, condemned to the margins by rules of chivalry, thoughts turning as fast as the tides of war. He watched, and he waited. He waited for the Black Knight to reveal himself, breath held as a single parry and thrust showed the truth.

Galehaut, Lord of the Distant Isles, challenger and victor and towering presence in his own right, was caught. The threads of his future twisted together, wound through those of a man he hadn't yet met, bound to Lancelot and Arthur and their queen. No longer his own.

***

Theirs was not a fairy tale.

Galehaut had never trusted the Fae, anyhow.

***

Arthur, for all that the scribes would call him cuckold, blind, was not a stupid man. That first evening, they sat together and built a new world, In it, some things were true and others were smoke and shadows and the shape of love that was too large for the rules of lesser men.

Love had many colors and Galehaut never asked what bound Guinevere to her husband or his court. It was enough that he knew what bound them both to him and his beloved Lancelot. When he gave up his destiny, it was because Galehaut gained much in exchange.

They would plan campaigns, and they would learn to trust each other. They would hold off the inevitable, for a brief, shining, incomprehensible moment. They would call each other friend, and they would mean it.

***

Arthur taught Galehaut chess. Galehaut taught Arthur charades.

Lancelot preferred falconry, and his horse. Together, they sang songs that hadn't been invented yet.

***

And then there was the queen. He bore Guinevere no ill will, and saw no reason for them to be anything less than friends. They were united by their love for the perfect knight, and Galehaut held those he loved loosely. He had seen the world, and all it could do, and was happy to share all he had with those who saw its value as he did.

He held fealty as his core, and so he gave it sparingly and took it only from those he trusted. 

***

Guinevere wished them all happy hunting. Her farewells were warm and given freely. Together, they set off into the southern kingdoms, trailing wagons and squires and the detritus of defense. The winter lay just behind them and the spring promised violence and glory.

The Saxons came, and they were driven back. They came again, and Arthur and Galehaut stood together as Lancelot led the charge. 

Lancelot was the greatest knight to have ever lived. The Saxons returned. 

***

No one spoke of Lancelot's origins, and the Lady of the Lake kept her own counsel. The Fae always had. Galahad was no more than a whisper in the ears of castle gossips, and Mordred was a beloved nephew and promised a future for the king and his wife and the kingdom they had built, standing together. 

Galehaut faced his own disaster, but he didn't know that yet.

***

Yet they will be happy. Whatever else, whatever is said of them by those who stand outside and pass judgment, they will be happy.

***

The universe had no power over love, over happiness, over friendship, over trust. The world would never touch the threads that bound them.

When Guinevere alone remained, she sang hymns in daylight and the old songs of courtly love by night. Buried far from her cloister, Galehaut and Lancelot slept through the decades, together beneath stone and waiting for Arthur's return.

The world forgot him, but Galehaut was remembered by those he loved, and those who loved him. History matters little to the dead.

***

Excaliber was a lodestone, but it was not a promise.

***

Later, much later, when he has given himself over to Arthur and his castle has begun to crumble around his throne, Galehaut sits in the quiet and listens to the drip of the rain somewhere in a hidden corner. He waits, and he remembers, and he believes, for a fleeting moment, that none of it is worth the cost.

A moment later, Lancelot wanders into the room. The sun comes out, and Galehaut gathers his wits and his horse. They set out together into the fresh spring air, laughing and planning the changes that summer will bring. In the end, it is worth everything, and Galehaut makes his choices with eyes wide open and head held high. 

He will be remembered, he tells himself, as a man who chose love over riches, and that is a lesson that Galehaut finds himself well pleased to give his people.

***

Had he known the truth, he still would have chosen the same.


End file.
